If you want to get the sales that others simply never even realised existed, the answer lies in what I like to call deep listening, and the best way to describe this is with the Chinese symbol for the verb “to listen”.… Read More

As a sales manager, it’s become more difficult to draw a distinct line between all the things a sales team should be doing – and all the activities that they love to spend time on – but lead them away from the straight and true path of your perfectly worked out plan. … Read More

Below are 3 recent examples where that responsibility was sadly lacking – and although the behaviour highlighted might seem surprising – I bet you’ve had a number of similar experiences of your own. … Read More

Is the sales story in your elevator speech 100% true? Can you genuinely promise, that the wonderful results witnessed by one or two of your previous customers, will happen to everyone else who works with you? .…Read More

I think the first time I read this Dalai Lama A to Z, was on an office wall positioned between two fairly uninspiring posters – you know the type – artistic photographs of someone standing on the top of a mountain at sunrise, framed by some quote about eagles or persistence or something similar. .…Read More

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Thanks for reading this blog post. On my blog, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends.

Relationship selling is a strange beast and countless authors have made many, many dollars explaining to sales people how to use it to their advantage.

Here’s a quick question for you;

Why do you think those buyers are entering into a relationship with YOU?

Is it because she doesn’t have enough friends? Maybe he has empty seats at his wedding, or do you think they’re trying to build a trade only pub quiz team, and they need you as captain?

Or maybe – just maybe – it’s because they make their living by meeting people just like us and getting the best deal for the most suitable product or service?

Just thought I’d throw it in there.

If you truly think that business is mostly about relationships, let me ask you another question;

How many bad second hand cars would you buy off your brother?

What the Buyers said;

“While I understand they have a budget for these things, I don’t need constant offers to be taken to lunch, golf, or ballgames, particularly if I’m not currently doing business with them. I’m a fellow professional, not a date to be wooed.”

“I hate it when a salesperson tries to be my best friend on the first call!”

Solution

You need to understand that being a fairly affable human being is actually a prerequisite for the job. You have to be a likeable individual; you have to be someone that others wish to spend time with – that’s a given.

However, you’re never going to blackmail a professional buyer into something that isn’t right for them with friendship – and if you think about it, that’s a fairly horrible thing to do any way.

Understand that they have a job to do, if you want them to retain your services, then you need to give them exceptional reasons for doing so. Regularly give your time and expertise freely and continuously strive to be viewed as valuable – rather than simply likeable – by engaging in activities that they see as having genuine value.

“This is how you must be. You must become as evangelical about your promised outcome as he is about his. You must believe that you, and you alone, have the solution to your prospects problems. Even if they do not recognise those problems themselves.”

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The piece above is taken from an article which appeared in this month’s Institute of Sales & Marketing Management’s Winning Edge Magazine – after asking almost half a million professional buyers one simple question; “How do most sales people let themselves down?”

“I just want to improve my closing, that’s all I need really. If I could close more sales everythingelse would fall into place.”

Which is partly true, however the ability to close effectively doesn’t have its origins in the fourth quarter of the sales process.

Anthony Robbins tells a great story about his meeting with a client, a plastic surgeon. He arrives early and while he’s in the waiting room, he picks up a book which the plastic surgeon has written.

As Anthony Robbins turns the pages, he sees pictures of the most beautiful people on earth, all surrounded by mathematical equations. This surgeon had actually worked out what it took to possess, and then how to create, the perfect face.

It turns out that, if the philtrum (the groove between your nose and top lip) is exactly the same size as your eye, your face would be in perfect balance – the perfect face.

One millimetre out and you have an average face, two millimetres out (according to Anthony Robbins) and you’re butt-ugly.

One millimetre out! Isn’t it amazing that something so small can make so much difference?

Let’s change the analogy.

Imagine if you’re sailing from Portsmouth, in the UK, to New York and your course starts out just one degree off.

One degree out doesn’t get you just outside New York – your little boat would find itself all the way up in Canada.

And it’s the same with every sales situation you’ll ever walk into.

If you don’t Earn the Right to sell to them, to be allowed to progress through each and every stage, right from the beginning – even misjudging it by the tiniest degree – you’ll end up miles away from a “Yes” by the time you get to your well-practised close, without even realising where it all went wrong.

Which is when most prospects turn round and say;

“Do you know what, I’m going to have to think about it!”

If you like – it’s at that point you could try to bully them with a couple of “sales mind tricks” – although I wouldn’t hold out much hope with an experienced buyer.

What the Buyers said

“Why do some salespeople think they’re being so clever? I see salespeople every day, how do they think some sleazy, worn out way of phrasing a close is suddenly going to make me change my mind? ”

“Salespeople should be honest. If they don’t know the answer to a question they should hold their hands up and say – sorry I don’t know the answer to that but I will find out and get back to you – rather than guess and are invariably wrong!”

Solution

Walk in understanding that if you don’t earn their trust at the beginning and throughout your conversation and presentation, they sure as hell won’t trust you with their money at the end.

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The piece above is taken from an article which appeared in this month’s Institute of Sales & Marketing Management’s Winning Edge Magazine – after asking almost half a million professional buyers one simple question; “How do most sales people let themselves down?”

I recently spent some time with an extremely senior group of sales people from one of the world’s biggest companies, who told me that everything was down to price.

No it isn’t.

Take for example their business. Ten senior sales people, big cars, expenses accounts, support staff – that’s a cost per person of at least £100,000 a year.

So that team of ten cost at least one million pounds to keep on the road – and they were a tiny percentage of the entire sales team.

When I suggested to them, that if all their problems were indeed down to price – and that the sales team could make no difference whatsoever – then surely getting rid of just those ten salespeople and changing the business model to a click down menu on a website, would save the business at least one million pounds.

If we did that, we could knock £1 off a million units immediately – if it was all down to price, then that’s the problem solved.

They didn’t like that idea at all.

But that unfortunately is the undeniable truth.

If the sales team don’t know or can’t explain the difference between their business and a lesser priced competitor – they become an expensive folly.

What the Buyers said;

“What’s the point of sales people who are unable to justify their mark-up percentage and margins?”

“Of course I’m going to hammer everyone down on price, that’s my job. That doesn’t mean to say I want tat! Getting the job done and receiving great value is what I’m paid for too.”

Solution

Work out the 5 reasons you are better value than the competition and then learn how to explain that to your customers.

Remember, evangelists don’t try and tell you about heaven to secure their place, they’re already going. They tell you because they don’t want you to miss out on paradise.

That is how you should be with your product or service. Get in there and help prospects make great buying decisions before some con artist tries to rip them off, overcharge them or sell them something they didn’t need or don’t want.

The piece above is taken from an article which appeared in this month’s Institute of Sales & Marketing Management’s Winning Edge Magazine – which I wrote after asking almost half a million professional buyers one simple question; “How do most sales people let themselves down?”

She can afford it – she’s got a really great job – she’s got a great car to part exchange too.

She invites me to go with her because I “understand sales people”.

She is smitten by this new car she’s seen – although she’s no fool, the deal has to be great.

We drive to the usual kind of business estate that big car dealerships tend to be on, finding it nestled somewhere between a Travelodge and a B&Q – the salesman who comes across to meet us fills me with a slight sense of disappointment before he even opens his mouth, she tells me not to be so judgemental.

So Why Should I Get Eexcited About this Car Then?

Over to you my scruffy little sales friend, time to shine – sell it to us.

“Well first let me tell you what it doesn’t have! The next model up has ……”
He then lists 5 or 6 things that are available on another version that she isn’t looking at, isn’t interested in and can’t afford.

“But we don’t want that model – what does this version have?”

“Oh, it’s just your standard spec!”

I don’t think an initial sales pitch has ever depressed me more – turns out the new car my friend was delirious about is just….standard – and whatever it’s actually got going for it isn’t even worth discussing.

This is clearly not the car he’d like to sell us.

He walks us over to her current (part exchange) vehicle, he’s being quite chauvinistic and ‘blokey’ – he knows I’m not the customer – but I’m the complete focus of his conversation. It makes me really uncomfortable.

“I Just Want to Have an Adult Conversation”

That’s what my friend said to me, before we got there.

“I don’t want to play games, I want a grown up to help me buy the right car for me.”

The car salesman looks at the car she wants to part exchange and starts sucking air through his teeth while flicking through some heavyweight trade book – it was getting on my nerves, so I said,

“It’s only had one careful lady owner.”

To which he replied,

“You found her then did you? The one careful lady driver.”

My friend called him a Neanderthal under her breath, but we follow him back to his desk anyway, she does really want that car – and there isn’t another similar dealership for 40 miles.

He’s talking numbers already, time to get down to business, no messing about – let’s find out how much a standard specification motor vehicle actually costs.

“I Want This, How Can You Help Me Afford It?”

OK, so my friend has an amount per month she can spend on here new car – it’s a fairly substantial amount and over a 3 year period she can easily afford the type of car she’s looking for – but she does want value for money and a good deal on her old car.

He does some big sums that we’re not allowed to be a party to then reads out the monthly payments in the strangest and most unattractive way possible.

“Over 5 years it’s £X per month, over 4 years it’s an extra £100 per month and over 3 Years it’s £200 more every month.”

Surely it would have been better if he’d said;

“Over 3 years it’s £X per month, over 4 years that becomes £100 more affordable, and over 5 that doubles to £200 less.”

I know it’s the same figures, same answers – but the way he did it just made it sound like the car was becoming more expensive with every syllable.

Set me up first with the most it’s going to cost me.

Let that settle in, OK – I’m not shocked, I can afford it – oh, what’s that you say? If I want to pay over a longer period there are other, more affordable options – even better!

We told him we wouldn’t mess him around; we’d call him after we’d spoken to the competition.

All the way home my friend was spotting the more expensive version of her once favourite new car and saying, “There’s the model that’s better than the one I wanted.”

She really did want that car, it’s a shame there was a salesman in the way to put her off.

“So many times, it happens too fast, you trade your passion for glory” Eye of the Tiger – Survivor

I cannot put into words how much I dislike the average, sales trainer taught elevator speech.

Until recently I couldn’t quite put my finger on the real reason why, I just knew they didn’t work.

Should someone approach – or worse, corner me in a lift – spouting out how incredible their solutions are and why I should change suppliers right nowI’m not going to gaze into their eyes like some evangelistic convert and skip away behind them while they play their mystical sales flute.

In reality, I would become suddenly introvert, skin-crawlingly uncomfortable and make my excuses just to get them out of my face – actually, I’m getting itchy just thinking about it.

But where were all the articles and quotes by the “Big Names” on planet sales to back me up or use as a reference to argue my side logically.

Then lo and behold, a couple of weeks ago, the wonderful Seth Godin wrote a short piece on elevator speeches that summed it up perfectly.

My favourite bit was;

“If you’ve told me what I need to know to be able to easily say no, I’ll say no.The best elevator pitch doesn’t pitch your project. It pitches the meeting about your project. It’s not a practiced, polished turd of prose that pleases everyone on the board and your marketing team”

Brilliantly put!

So whether you are getting in touch with people through social media, on the phone, knocking on doors or networking – start to create a conversation piece that gives people a reason to have a discussion properly, comfortably – learn to pitch the meeting and not the meat.

It has to be intriguing and exciting with a hint of previous glory and a promise of future benefits.

What it can’t be is a 30 second personal ad designed to stun the buying sense out of your fellow human being, because they just don’t work.

“See yourself, give your freewill a chance, you’ve got to work to succeed” Owner of a Lonely Heart – YES

Some people ask, “What is the world going to do for me?”

There are those who ask, “What can I do for myself?”

And there are a few who ask, “What can I become?”

Group 1 always depend on external factors to change their lives, believing they should own everything their neighbour possesses – delivered straight to their door and costing nothing in time, money or effort.

They also believe that promotion at work is connected to length of service rather than achievement. If a business crumbles and fails they were in no way responsible and stick out their hand to collect the compensation.

The second group are a solid, hard working bunch.

They were brought up to pay their way, they’re proud to the point of almost starving before accepting handouts and – just as soon as the opportunity presents itself – they go out and bring in a wage, earning the respect of those who had raised them, proving that the lessons had been learnt and that the baton had been passed to a safe pair of hands.

Every now and again, an individual evolves from the second group into Group 3.

When they fall down their friends and family kindly say;

“Don’t worry, you did your best!”

They reply;

“But my best wasn’t good enough – how do I do this better!”

They take stock of their strengths and weaknesses and they determine what it is they can – and need to – become.

They focus on where it is they want to go and then begin to develop the knowledge, stamina, character, discipline and muscle required.

Their first target destination isn’t usually that far, but to them it feels like a million miles– however once reached, they look back from their new comfort zone to the place from which they started and realise;

“If that ocean was crossable then the next one must be too!”

They plot their course and take the journey, every time arriving at exotic new destinations that seemed impossible only a few years earlier.

In May 1954, Roger Bannister ran the first four minute mile.

At the commonwealth games in July 1954 – less than 2 months later – two men ran a sub four minute mile in the same race – after that, it just became a common occurrence.

Once the mental barrier was down, those who’d always had the natural ability to do it – did it.

The mile didn’t get any shorter, the four minutes remained 240 seconds long, it was simply the difference between “What can I do?”and “What can I become?”